


Terms and Conditions

by notoneforreality



Series: Darcy Lewis & Co. and Affiliated Stories [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awesome Darcy Lewis, BAMF Darcy, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Darcyland, Experiments, Explosions, Gen, Randomly named made up lab equipment, SCIENCE!, Science!People, Science!Wrangler, inaccurate science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 21:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7191230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy apparently missed the small print of her intern application that read: ‘expect explosions and actual real-life mad scientists’, but she figures she’ll make the best of it, even if she has to write her own damn laws.<br/>Or: A list of laboratory rules and the strenuous circumstances that enforced the necessity of each one.</p><p>[short story sister fic to 'There Are Worse People to be Soulbonded To' from 'Darcy Lewis and Co.']</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rule 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadows_of_Shemai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadows_of_Shemai/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Darcy Lewis and Co.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7155806) by [notoneforreality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality). 



> Hey so this is based on/inspired by the first fic in my Darcyland story Darcy Lewis and Co. where a few of Darcy's rules are mentioned. I thought I would just write a list of the rules and put it up, but Shadows_of_Shemai suggested adding snippets of when an exasperated Darcy declared each one, and thus 'Terms and Conditions' was born. So enjoy, and go read my other set if you haven't already.

Rule one was established as soon as they worked it out.

Darcy found out she was in fact Jane’s third intern in as many months, and when she managed to get the contact details of her predecessors, it became clear that Darcy was some sort of miracle with regards to the machines. Emile Larzen told her to make sure Jane didn’t use the advanced vibration spectrometer without a fire extinguisher and three rolls of duct tape. Darcy made do with a warm hand on the warm metal casing and humming the lullaby her mother used to sing to her. Erik winced in anticipation of the explosion, then stared at Darcy in awe as the machine merely clunked a few times then rattled happily and printed off the readings.

Louise Anthony told Darcy to try and keep Jane from using the particle modulator at all costs. Darcy was too late to stop the first explosion, but the ominous clattering stopped when Darcy patted it gently. Darcy and Erick were stumped by ‘the Darcy Effect’, but Darcy shrugged and mentally adopted the lab equipment as a metal menagerie of pets.

After Jane blew up the elemental evaporator while Darcy was out getting coffee ( _“It’s a misnomer anyway, Darce. I never liked that machine; it doesn’t matter that it exploded.” Darcy sighed sadly and looped a length of wire from the broken machine around her wrist_ ), Darcy bought a little black leather notebook and printed ‘RULEBOOK’ on the front cover. On the first page, she wrote:

Rule Number One: Don’t use the machines without Darcy because Darcy is the lab-tech-whisperer.


	2. Rule 2

Rule two was written as soon as Darcy’s hand stopped shaking after Jane nearly turned the lab into outer-space.

Darcy left the lab for approximately half an hour; long enough to go back to her apartment for the purse she’d forgotten on the way to work that morning, get to Isabel’s Diner and order the usual three coffees whilst chatting to the barista, and stroll back to the lab…to find it shaking in its foundations. Darcy froze for a moment, then remembered who she worked for and rushed forwards.

(Afterwards, Jane said it was a miracle Darcy didn’t spill any of the drinks. Darcy said it was a miracle they didn’t die.)

Inside, Jane was struggling with the atmospheric baromet-scanner, complicated equations running across the screen as a swirling pool of black unfurled in the middle of the ledge, like a drop of ink in water. Erik clung to one of the walls as everything shuddered towards ‘the anomaly’, as Jane later referred to it, and Jane herself was frantically typing to try and counteract the expansion of whatever part of space was trying to grow in front of the workbenches.

Darcy screeched and dropped the coffee cups onto the nearest surface before running over to stroke her baby and try and stop the slightly terrifying juddering of the machine which made it look like it was trying to get away, but after only a few moments, something inside made a muffled boom, and then both Darcy and Jane were thrown backwards as the machine shattered.

Good news: the wormhole or whatever disappeared. Bad news: It was replaced with fire, a lot of it.

Once the New Mexico Fire Department had finished dealing with the flames merrily burning through the lab, and once Darcy had manged to get Jane to shut up about the possibilities this presented, Darcy managed to extract the story of what had happened.

As soon as Darcy could find a pen, and as soon as her hand stopped shaking, she grabbed the little leather notebook. There on the second page, she scrawled:

Rule Number Two: Absolutely definitely no interdimensional astrophysics or nuclear experiments when Darcy is not in the lab


	3. Rule 3(a)

The third time Darcy used her Rulebook was A.T.: After Thor.

As soon as the magic rainbow bridge closed behind Thor, Jane rushed back to the labs, feverishly altering readings and settings on the machines, her mind locked on the new proof of her Albert-Nathan Bridge (“Darcy, do you have to use their first names? That’s not what the bridge is called.”) and, as usual, forgetting about everything else. Darcy sighed and told Erik to keep an eye on Jane while Darcy went for lunch.

Darcy went to Isabel’s, and decided that after the crazy few days she had just had, she could give herself half an hour or so to sit down and eat. Plus, Isabel and Jack-in-the-bar would appreciate a customer who wouldn’t keep smashing their things. She ordered her usual meal and drink, and dropped into the chair at her favourite table. After a while, Jack slid in opposite her and they started talking.

Jack had just mentioned that he had found his soulmate, when Darcy narrowed her eyes. She grabbed a bag to go to put food in for Jane, and said bye with a kiss on the cheek, and ran back to the lab.

Erik was fussing over Jane, who looked grey, but was waving him off with and drooping hand. Darcy marched up to the scientists.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” She demanded. Jane thought about it, then shrugged. Darcy rolled her eyes. “And how much have you eaten?” Jane looked at her blankly. Darcy sighed heavily, and pushed the bag of food into Janes hands.

“Thanks Darce.”

“Eat.”

Erik took the food Darcy handed to him with a grateful smile and retreated to his desk.

No sooner had he sat down, then Jane squeaked, and Darcy flinched as something popped and a silver blur streaked past her face. She turned towards Jane, who was looking at her with pleading eyes in front of a smoking machine. At least it hadn’t exploded this time.

The machine sparked and both girls jumped back.

“What did you do?!”

“I dropped green pepper into it.”

Darcy threw her hands up, then gently coaxed the machine in murmurs to stop it hissing and spitting, and retrieved the screw that had been flung across the room. Once everything calmed down, Darcy withdrew her little notebook from the pocket she had taken to carrying her rulebook in, and added:

Rule Number Three: Lunch is a compulsory ten minutes minimum _far_ away from the machines.


	4. Rule 3(b)

Darcy had to re-write the rules once they moved into Stark’s Tower.

When they moved into the tower, they found out that Jane is the newest addition to the list of native Science!Speakers in the tower, and Darcy introduces pigin-Science! to the Tower. She explained both of these concepts gleefully to Pepper Potts, because it was easier to tell her about the crucial exclamation mark — the one that you needed to be able to hear in speach and got squidged between the two words in writing — than to freak out over the fact that she’s talking to the actual Pepper Potts.

As a direct result of this conversation, Pepper Potts hired Darcy Lewis as official Head Science!Wrangler, and Darcy loved her for using her own language. Darcy met Bruce Banner and Tony Stark and also Colonel James Rhodes.

After a couple of weeks, Darcy appointed Colonel Rhodes as Tony’s personal Science!Wrangler because he was the only one who could get Tony out of his lab when things got bad. She appointed Pepper as Bruce’s personal Science!Wrangler, and felt a rush of excitement when Pepper agreed because Pepper was the big boss, and she was following Darcy’s orders.

The first time they realised how vital supervision was, it was a Tuesday. Darcy knew this because the reason she wasn’t in the lab was because Jane promised not to go down to the lab until midday on Tuesdays, which gave Darcy time to catch up on her TV. Colonel Rhodes was on duty in whatever warzone America was butting into at the time, and Pepper had come to find Darcy, to ask her about certain paperwork Jane needed to fill out.

J.A.R.V.I.S.’s voice had a slightly off note to it when he requested to women’s presence in the labs, and it had the two ladies running for the elevator that J.A.R.V.I.S. had already called up. When they stumbled out into the labs, smoke made Darcy’s eyes and throat sting, and Pepper coughed loudly next to her as they peered through the smoke to try and find a sign of life.

When Darcy spotted Jane through half-shuttered, watery eyes and five layers of greyscale, she rushed over to her. A voice from nowhere in particular told J.A.R.V.I.S. to open the emergency ventilation system, and when the smoke finally cleared, it revealed two other sheepish Science!People standing in the middle of a blast zone. Pepper frowned at Tony, who shrunk back, and Darcy glared at Jane, who shuffled into line with Tony and Bruce. With all four of them watching, Darcy drew out the black notebook from her pocket and waved it in the air.

“This is the Lab Rulebook. Rules will be followed in Jane’s lab, and should be followed in your own, although I don’t care as much if you blow up your own lab. Broken Rules result in Broken Dreams.”

With that ominous declaration, Darcy flicked through to the third page — because this was an important rule that needed to be high up — and changed it to read:

Rule Number Three (revised): No fellow Science!People in the labs unless a Science!Wrangler is present


	5. Rule 4

Darcy updated the rulebook in England before everything went down with the space elves. It was Ian’s fault because everything was Ian’s fault and Darcy should not have hired an intern in the first place but that was beside the point. Technically it was Darcy’s job as Jane’s intern to go and get the scientist coffee, but Jane was rearranging the molecules in some element or other and Darcy had to stay and comfort machine Jane was using because it got nervous when Darcy moved too far away and started rattling dangerously. So Darcy handed down the task to her own intern and told him to get her some coffee while he was at it, too. Darcy had forgotten that Ian had been working with Jane for a week and had not quite grasped some of the finer details that had to be observed in labs with Doctor Jane Foster inside and assumed that Ian would know to leave the coffee over at the desks which were a Darcy-Approved distance from anything dangerously Science!y.

Darcy didn’t see when Ian returned. She was crouched down behind the machine so she could reach it’s extractor fan because it was whining pitifully when she heard Jane thank her for the coffee, and she stood up, frowning, just in time to see Jane reach absentmindedly for a takeaway mug on the top of the machine.

She was too late to stop it going everywhere.

The machine whined one more time and died softly, and Darcy rested her head on the hot metal, mentally promising a whole roll of duct tape the next day. Then she went over to the desks and found a pen and her notebook, writing in huge letters:

Rule Number Four: No hot drinks in the lab

After a moment, she changed it to read:

Rule Number Four: No hot drinks in the lab (unless you’re Darcy)


	6. Rule 5

Rule five was also established in England, this time after everything went down with the space elves. 

As soon as it was clear Thor was back for good, Darcy had her work cut out for her in keeping everyone focused in the lab at all times. Thor was a wonderful person who was thoroughly interested in everything Jane had to say, but Jane had a habit of reaching for him distractedly and staring at him through narrowed eyes for longer than was sensible when she was in the middle of an experiment.

Darcy didn't blame her, really. They had all but convinced themselves that New Mexico was some sort of shared dream, possibly induced by a rogue experiment, when everything had blown up again. She'd probably be doing something similar if her soulmate had dropped out of the sky, vanished for two years, then reappeared saying he'd forgone the crown for her love. She didn't ever want to meet her soulmate, however, so she just lured Thor out of the lab with a plastic mug of coffee. He'd gotten much better at midgardian behaviour, but her years with Jane had taught Darcy it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Ian wasn't helping, either. Darcy felt a little sorry for him being thrown into the whole situation, but he kept dropping everything or tripping over his own feet or the nearest lab equipment because he was too busy staring at Thor in a mix of awe and shock.

After one particularly memorable occasion when the both of them were stuck staring -- during which Ian dropped a spanner on Darcy's foot and Jane left the fancy barometer unattended for long enough for it to start sputtering-- Darcy snatched the spanner up to brandish at the three of them and reluctantly got her rulebook out to add another with an apology to Thor.

Rule Number Four: No Thor in the lab during important experiments (until certain people learn to control themselves)

Thor was a lot more gracious about his being barred than Darcy would have been, and went to find Erik so he could explain baseball. Darcy wished him luck with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow okay yeah it's been A While. Sorry about that. More is coming though, for Terms and Conditions and Darcy and Co. and more stories to be added to the 'Affiliated' section, so stay turned for that


End file.
